The above image was generated with stable diffusion from the prompt 'The 321 Incident. A crowd of people holding political signs and sleeping.' The 321 Incident is the title of my latest sci fi novel, the last chapter of which was posted yesterday. If you want to read the draft, begin with chapters 1 and 2. Note that this work considers difficult subjects.
The Story
The 321 Incident begins with a big national tragedy that claims the same number of lives as 9/11 did. From there, the story follows a handful of characters as they try to navigate the post-tragedy landscape. Although they face steep challenges, synchronicities and the magic of human connections help them find their way. Politics, media, harm reduction, and non-ordinary states of consciousness are some of the themes that the work explores.
The sci fi in this story mostly involves uncanny timing and fringe spirituality of the sort that's common in New Age circles. One character channels an extradimensional entity named Tiku from the planet Tikatoo. Another sees visions of the future. These ideas aren't presented as grandiose, but they are a part of things.
Background
A few months ago, I was working on the sequel to my as-yet-unpublished novel The Brockton Exodus and was having a great time with it. Then, all of the sudden, someone new came into my life. Someone that inspired me to reevaluate everything. I realized that the Brockton Exodus sequel was the sort of thing that could be written at any time, whereas there was a new story that I felt compelled to write right now. Specifically, I wanted to try and envision events that could plausibly lead to peaceful systemic change in the US.
Constraining the story to the realm of the theoretically plausible was a fun exercise. One that I think made the final work more grounded than it otherwise would've been. The most surprising thing that came up while writing was the idea that the best case scenario for national politics might be utter gridlock preventing the government from doing more harm than it already does. The most hopeful political scenario I could imagine was both anti-political and anti-partisan.
Accomplishment
The completion of The 321 Incident marks the achievement of a goal I set at the end of 2018. I wanted to write ten good sci fi novels in five years and now I have done that. This is a major milestone for me. Reaching it involved plenty of inspired daydreaming, as well as some brutal pragmatism and relentless determination.
Each work averages 50k words, so they're short novels. Any shorter and they'd be novellas. But altogether, these recent books of mine do amount to something substantial. Half a million words is kind of a lot.
Where to go from here is an open question. I of course have to format the last couple of books and get them to my editor. There's description text and art and marketing to consider. But for now, for today at least, I'm trying to just focus on celebrating what I've achieved. Because it's a big deal.
Read my novels:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS.
- The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
- Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
See my NFTs:
- Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
- History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
- Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
Yippee!! So proud of you, and impressed by you! Go Mark!
Your latest novel on the 321 incident was excellent. Such a skillful weaving of humanizing dialogue and stories, suspenseful plot twists, intriguing explorations of consciousness, political corruption, and thought-provoking concepts pointing to real solutions and possibilities when it comes to systemic change. This is no easy task. If you ask me, you went out with a bang in terms of your writing objective!
Is the title you settled on The 321 Incident? And I'm definitely curious about what the art work will look like for this novel.
Also, I didn't know that you were working on a sequel to your other novel when 321 came along!
Thank you! Yes, the provisional title is The 321 Incident. I'm not totally attached to this. If you have a better title, now's the time to say so: )
It's true that I set aside another book to write this one. For every two novels I complete, there's a half-finished work waiting to be picked back up at some point in the future.
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